“In Asia, tea is usually offered as a sense of welcome and we wanted a name that reflected that,” said Black.

SilverNeedle Hospitality is what he calls “an integrated hospitality company” with three disciplines – investment, development and management.

When I last caught up with Black more than a year ago, he was deep in talks to buy Constellation Hotels, an Australian/New Zealand management group which has five brands – Chifley Hotels, Grand Chifley Hotels, Australis Hotels & Resorts, Country Comfort Hotels and Sundowner Hotels – and everything was pretty hush-hush.

With the deal consummated almost a year after talks began, Constellation has rebranded as SilverNeedle and Black, with his team, is ready to take the new hotel company to new places and I mean, more than geographically.

He sees a golden (pardon the pun) opportunity to do things differently. Coming from a traditional, luxury background – his career has been with Regent, Four Seasons, Fullerton and lately high end boutique hotels – Black wants to build a next generation product and experience for the next generation.

He sees an opportunity to break down the traditional hotel model and rebuild it from the ground up.

One thing you can count on – SilverNeedle’s owners have deep pockets. They are part of the Nadathur Group, an investment firm owned by Nadathur S. Raghavan and family, co-founder of NASDAQ-listed Infosys Technologies. The Nadathur Group manages around US$750 million in capital and has invested in over 25 start-ups in a range of industries from life sciences to engineering.

So expect technology to be a key part of SilverNeedle’s play in making its hotels as efficient as possible as well as in customer-facing services.

The acquisition of Constellation not only gave the company immediate scale – 4,500 rooms in 70 locations in Australia and New Zealand – but also access to systems and processes that are all about efficiency. The way hotels are run down under are very different from in Asia, said Black. There, it’s all about efficiency and room to staff ratios of 0.3-0.4.
“We were impressed by how efficient the operations are and we will take lessons from there, and blend that with our Asian standards of hospitality.”

Hence NEXT, the new brand, will blend the best of both worlds – Australian efficiency and Asian service standards. “We will provide Australian-style functionality back of the house to support the Asian sense of hospitality which is about putting people in front of the guests,” he said.

Said Black, “We recognize an opportunity with the upper mid tier catering to and being designed for the emerging middle class in Asia – people who are tech savvy, aspirational and very connected. Connected doesn’t just mean the Internet but connected to the community where the hotel becomes inclusive rather than exclusive.”

He cites the example of Ian Schrager’s new hotel, Public, in Chicago which opens up its spaces to the public so that “people will use us as their neighbourhood space”.

And he’s thinking of the “Cost Plus” model where you pay for what you get and everything else is at cost. So for example, no more exclusive business centre (read post) but an inclusive space where you can get things done at cost, no more over-priced laundry service; and no more over-priced minibar items because that becomes part of the room price and if you want extras, you can go to the convenience store and get whatever items you want.

“NEXT is about efficiency, we are not going to have three restaurants but we will outsource to local established restaurants who do that really well.”

He will also get rid of “departmentalizing” and instead have staff work as teams so they can handle multiple functions. “The reason we will be able to help you send a fax at cost is because we will no longer have a staff there manning the business centre,” said Black.

A new approach will also be taken with distribution and marketing with Mark Simmons, responsible for sales and marketing, and Mark Wong, former Small Luxury Hotels of the World, as AVP for marketing.

The emphasis will be on “direct, loyalty and connected”, said Simmons. Thus investments will be made into the web and mobile channel. “We have no legacy systems so we can make the leap into mobile easily,” said Wong who will be driving distribution. “We will focus on direct customer bookings and interaction.”

Traditional travel agents will continue to be important. In Australia, Simmons said travel agents including GDS account for 40-50% of business. Constellation’s loyalty programme, The Escape Club, with 30,000 members will be revamped and expanded.

The group has opened regional sales offices in Australia, Singapore, Bangkok with one due to open in Mumbai. It intends to open in China in the next 12-18 months.

Two NEXT hotels are due to open shortly, said Black, although he did not wish to disclose where they were.

His aim is to have 30% non-branded White Label properties and 70% NEXT branded hotels of which 25% will be owned assets. “There will be some rationalizing of the brands in Australia over time,” said Black.